Jeremy Hunt is trying to push for another EU referendum: I think May might accept it at this point. This could really fucking Labour lads: Corbyn can't campaign to support May's deal and he would be pressured into Remain. I'm kinda worried lads ngl.

how would this fuck labour, this would be spitting in the face of the Conservative party base. people aren't just going to forget about brexit if you revoke A50. the country would be irreversibly divided between remain and leave - the hardcore remainers already vote for labour and a 2nd ref would make the leavers up for grabs as well for any populist worth his salt.

labour votes for may's brexit deal in exchange for the pro-deal conservatives voting for 75% of labour's 2017 manifesto policies.

would seem like the only way of resolving the otherwise buggered parliamentary maths on her end, except something like the lib dems and SNP balking at the last minute and voting for a terrible deal just to prevent a no-deal scenario.

>they believe it will make it impossible for the party to implement a leftwing manifesto

Wait - they want to remain in the iron grip of the neoliberal Brussels bureaucracy, with all it's attendant limits to what a national government can do when it comes to nationalization and so on - so they can implement the manifesto? I would think it would be the other way around.

what's the tony benn quote to the extent of "every time i say we need to implement socialism, the response is "we agree, but we can't afford it at the moment due to the present economic crisis" - but i always have to reply, the crisis is precisely the time to be implementing socialism!"

So would anyone that isn't a booj large business owner or literally downs syndromed, you'd think. Fuck, giving so much control to the membership was the worst decision labour ever made. I said this would happen, moronic smarts-deficient middle class students would ruin everything. If these people arn't purged soon i will never vote for labour again and i'm sure i'm far from the only one.

I was surprised my local Labour student group was well known as being one of the most Blairite in the country now they are run by bennites and most are anti EU with many saying they would vote leave if there was a second ref

I just don't think there will be a second ref. Its just not possible without extending article 50 which the Torys will never do. Labour just needs to keep itself together and watch the Torys tear themselves apart.

EU has no standards nor ability to control its member states in any way or form. For example Finnish government has been for decades been challenged on basis of human rights court of EU over "political" imprisonment of those refusing to serve their mandatory military service.

A lot of Triple AAAs are made in the UK because 1) we have a good uni system that turns out compsci graduates (COCKSHOTT GANG RISE UP) 2) we speak English 3) we were home computer early adopters 4) is/was very easy for someone with a degree to immigrate (especially from the EU) 5) decent internet speeds where it counts.

But if you mean good games, then Football Manager, Worms, and Littlebigplanet.

>Interesting, so what would happen if Rockstar North decided to split off and reform themselves as DMA design again?

I don't think they could just do that legally, and obviously the rights to GTA would belong to Rockstar but it would be a pretty fucking big blow considering it was the Core of the GTA V development team. People forget that when you outsource you lose talent and training: which is especially important in a industry like game development or computer programming in general.

How long would the process of extending the Article 50 period take? Is it even practical, assuming May continues procrastinating into January? Plus I imagine a lot of MPs will refuse to vote for a second referendum even if whipped.

Off topic, but who the fuck filmed that video at the start? The framing is disgusting. No, it's not quirky or interesting, it's just an unfocused mess that looks like it was filmed by a high-schooler. Is this what British television is like?

I just found out that the guy that keeps shouting on the news is a vet. not only does he keep ruining the news but he also went and shot people for the neoliberal, imperalist british state… I might have my work cut out for my, anons.

on a different note does anyone know of anyone like Paul Cockshott working in the Labour party as advisors or policy makers? Or anything about what John McDonnell wants to actually do with the economy?

the one they are doing now is not a vote of no confidence in the Government (which could cause the government to fall) but a no confidence motion for the PM which doesn't do anything, the last I read May was just going to ignore it and not give it time

I guess reading the 2017 manifesto is the best we can get. Tho i assume the 2017 manifesto was only a 'put your toe in first. slowly slowly.' kind of situation. I do not know enough about the inside workings of the leaders staff, etc. I hear he has some good people around him though in regards to Len Mcluskey and his allies. **Len for PM!!!*

Well yes and no. Under the FTPA it has to be in the government to eject the PM: however if a vote against the PM is passed then there is a reasonable constitutional argument to demand the Queen remove May from her office (which I saw someone state is possible to do with a specific motion). Honestly if such a vote was put forth and passed it could create a constitutional crisis. You have to remember that most of our constitution is a fudge that was brought into existence along the way: this could be one of those fudges.

>on a different note does anyone know of anyone like Paul Cockshott working in the Labour party as advisors or policy makers? Or anything about what John McDonnell wants to actually do with the economy?

I think Cockshott keeps his distance from the Labour party: and McDonnell's work seems more Wolffian than Cockshottian. McDonnell seems to be pushing self-management far more than cybernetics right now.

Although one of the blokes from project Cybersyn did a talk at The World Transformed so there is some hope.

As for ideological groups, there are a few within the Corbyn inner circle.

The Neo-Attleeans: These are mostly institutionalist socdems that want to change various institutions in the UK towards a more comprehensive welfare system. Best example is Rayner, who plans to create a comprehensive education system to rival the NHS. Not marxist by any means but inherently useful and beneficial to fixing a lot of shit in this country.

The Union Left: What it says on the tin, the leftwing of the Trade Union movement, Red Len is the best example as is Party General Sec Jennie Formby.

The Anti-Melt Left: These are the youngings that are mostly extra-parliamentary but act as advisors for policy & coordinate media spin. Matt Zarb-Cousin, Aaron Bastani, Owen Jones (stop if this sounds familiar). Good at radicalising youth but also prone to braindead idpol gesturing.

The "Ultra-tankies": this is unironically the name for the CPGB faction that two of Corbyn's advisors belong to; Andrew Murray and Seumas Milne. They subscribe to the CPGB's old "British road to socialism" path.

Ah, cool. I didn't even get around to looking at cookies. Did you remember what the particular cookie that deals with this was called off hand by any chance? (Not important, i'm just lazy).

Ctrl+U to view source and then Ctrl+f and search for '@content' works fine in a pinch. Basically the site will serve you the article no matter what and uses some javascript to stop you scrolling, etc. You can also just save the page and remove that. I was thinking of writing a browser plugin or a script that did it automatically, perhaps.

Most of these blockers are paper-thin. They don't actually deny you any information, they just have a script that puts a picture in front of it. Funnily enough, those scripts that you sometimes see block you if you use an adblocker can easily be removed using the adblocker (or by digging through the HTML-script for the page and removing the element, it's the same thing, but using the adblocker is simpler).

To be fair I don't think Aaron should be lumped in with the rest of them, you can pretty clearly tell he tries to actively avoid the braindead intersectional shit and only begrudgingly concedes to it when he has to, if anything though that does make the whole environment worse since he has to not only watch what he says for everyone on the right to quotemine but also the people that are supposedly on his own /side/. I think Aaron is walking that tightrope pretty well tbh, although I'm concerned that his FALC shit is just going to end up being naive bollocks and I wish he would be more uncompromising. Idk I think he's wasted on Novara, they literally employ Laurie Penny's sister, and Penny is a complete fucking wrecker who I wouldn't be surprised of if she were found to be on the spook payroll.

Eh my problem with Aaron is he tries to pill off effectively ☭TANKIE☭ takes without a) going all in or b) Hitchensing your way out by showing you know way fucking more than your opponent. Also his FALC stuff is mostly "automate shit" instead of anything Cockshottism (the virgin technocommunist vs the Chad Cyberneticist pls). Also tbh I prefer Zab-Cousin far more than either Bastani or Jones purely because he can speak to normal people without mentioning intersectionalist (Jones) or ranting about how we should break up the British Legion (Bastani). Also Segalov is pretty good.

My problem with No cars is that they're a bit too YOOFY and not really for normal ass people.

Right that's what I mean he never goes all in which I wish he would, and he's definitely got the nous to navigate it without seeming like an out of touch LARPer it's just that when you do a) you neccessarily do b) to defend yourself and I think that's perfectly viable when you've got only the Right to contend with, but as I said when it's a balancing act between Intersectionalists & the Right you don't also want to add into the mix drawing the ire of Sectarians who can't have measured takes on ML because they've internalized some kind of Anti-Communist Propaganda. That being said though, Novara as they are now regularly get shit on in the comments by those types AND ☭TANKIE☭s (I've even thrown in a few critiques here and there) because of their tendency to pander to Socdem bullshit.

I reckon from what little I see of Zarb he's definitely better at picking his hills and talking in a way that leaves less room for him to be taken out of context but it also seems like he can come off as a bit unfocused or platitudinal at times, which, whilst it might be on message for most people makes me worry about his real positions or his place within any potential political formation. Perhaps I need to read/listen to a bit more of him.

WRT to Bastini's FALC stuff yeah that's basically my position too, approaching it from more of a Cybernetic angle, I just worry that for a position as esoteric to most people as FALC, he doesn't have the expertise to ground it in reality. A good example of this that I saw someone comment about the other week was when he was talking about Trains as his single issue, lad in the comments pointed out that using Maglev was far superior to what he proposed in terms of cost & efficiency and when you're making a practical argument, even if it's offhand, to not mention that makes it seem like he doesn't know much about what he's saying.

I'd like to see Novara bring in more older people on staff tbh, but I have a feeling their finance structure isn't really conducive to it long term atm. Given that IIRC it grew out of Uni Students who all knew each other I'm not surprised it has that vibe to a lot of people, but I'd be more concerned about it's appeal to Rural voters even if that has a lot of overlap with what you're saying.

Butler is definitely the one pulling most of the strings in terms of behind the scenes logistics and stuff but that also doesn't surprise me since he's the most well connected and he's also the one with the most education in the technical side of British Politics. If we're being completely honest, he's a bit too Eton for a lot of people to be the face of Novara, and as a small nitpick his Class background does kind of expose itself sometimes in the way that he talks to people. For example I just watched this show they had about Centrism last night where the Bald geezer with Glasses, Walker, was asking him about what Conventions are in Parliament and he just kind of lost his temper out of nowhere in a very "know your place" sort of way and I think a lot of people will see something like that and be very put off, it's a very elitist way of acting that isn't congruent with what Novara is trying to do.

I don't see how McDonnell and Cockshott are mutually exclusive. Labour still want several things state owned, for example the NHS wastes a fucking fortune on bureaucracy and provisioning (dae £3000 tub of skin cream?). Why is nobody pushing for NHS cybernetics?

Eh this is dishonest, Benns project was moreso "modernizing" old school social democracy to attempt to lay the groundwork for the possibility of a future Socialist Britain. Can't say it wasn't flawed but Social Democracy wasn't the ultimate goal. I'm sure some more educated posters than me could expand on this.

I was unironically thinking about writing a manifesto on introducing cybernetics to NHS logistics. Imagine it, a cybersyn ensuring peak efficiency with lorry delivers to get medicine ect. to places. The money it could save, heck the lives it could save.

As for defining Benninism, it has a few key points but essentially it is taking Marxian analysis, reaching the conclusion the best way to create the dictatorship of the proletariat is to create a true political and economic democracy, and using social democratic means to implement this. It is actually kinda interesting how you can see this ideology form throughout his life: he grew up in a trad english radical household, he became anti-imperialist training as a pilot in Rhodesia, he developed contempt for the British elite at the BBC, he developed democratic reformist tendencies by being denied the right to be an MP after his dad died & passed his lordship down, his anti-bureaucratism having to deal with the civil service, and finally is introduced to Marxist thought in the 1970s & 80s.

So to boil it down, Benn sees Britain as an imperialist country but takes his analysis further by adopted the Orwellian analysis that the British elite itself rules Britain as another part of the Empire (mask growing to fit a face ect.). As such to fix that inherent issues of this elite radical democratisation of our political system needs to be introduced " Beyond parliamentary democracy as we know it, we shall have to find a new popular democracy to replace it.". To accompany this Britain needs to introduce economic democracy to further weaken or even destroy the power of this elite by giving the working masses the economic power and control over their own lives "The demand for more popular power is building up most insistently in industry, and the pressure for industrial democracy has now reached such a point that a major change is now inevitable, at some stage. What is happening is not just a respectful request for consultation before management promulgates its decisions. Workers are not going to be fobbed off with a few shares…or by a carbon copy of the German system of co-determination. The campaign is very gradually crystallizing into a demand for real workers' control.". It's kinda best summed up in his quote on democracy itself: "I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world, because if you have power you use it to meet the needs of you and your community." He uses social democratic (I mean this in the OG sense of the word) electoralist means mostly because he thought such change could not occur rapidly in the UK. This elite couldn't be overthrown in a day because of how they were entrenched. As such, a war of attrition would be needed to remove it by increasing democracy in the economic and political spheres.

You may disagree with it from a theoretical standpoint (I don't), but it is a sound theory of Socialism with British Characteristics. Honestly having written that all out, kinda makes me want to write a tract on the "fundamentals of Benninism now".

Cheers for doing our job for us lad, also I think making an effortpost or thread about Benninism is a great idea, because it will not only elucidate a /tendency/ based on real pragmatic endeavours towards a future Communist Society that has been not only sorely forgotten, but twisted into a demented creature by opportunist liberals, socdems & "demsocs", who desperately need to be reminded that their bullshit is not the end of the means but merely means to the end. It might also have the nice side effect of shutting up burgers who see the bullshit that orgs like Democrat Cops of America pull and assume that must extend to the Corbyn incarnation of the Benn project (unfortunately there also seem to be those involved in it who also think this so perhaps it's not entirely unwarranted). Most importantly though, it's actually arguable that now we have moved beyond post-war social democracy & the reaction against it didn't solve anything it appeared to, this period we are now in is even more ripe for the taking with a Benninite strategy. The Contradictions of Capital are increasingly being laid bare and the Bourgeoisie has very little recourse to implement piecemeal reforms that will satisfy a Working Class with growing consciousness who have been regaled with tales of an idyllic period and wish to return to it. It's simply not possible to go back to Social Democracy in the wake of a recession that has never been recovered from and a "Neoliberal" period that has merely stemmed the bleeding of the falling rate of profit. There is more turmoil ahead and our task should be to guide this political will of the Working Class organically full well knowing that it will only lead to betrayal when none of their demands can be met through Bourgeois Democracy, ready to swoop in and provide them with the knowledge to tie such a glaring example of systemic failure to that which we have said. There is no going back, it was never real and couldn't be so again, there is only forward, ``"Beyond Parliamentary Democracy as we know it, we shall have to find a new Popular Democracy to replace it."``

Tbh I mean more than just writing a Rafiq post about Benninism, but an actual tract laying out the basic tenets. I would need to read more though tbh, and formalise his stance on foreign policy (I think he was more of a vulgar pacifist in this area outside of his anti-colonialism).

As for Benninism's inapplicability in other countries, you might be dead right: I mean one of Benn's points on democracy is that the same elite has ruled Britain for about 2 centuries (can't really say this of any other European state). I would also say that the American bourgeoisie has gone through several phases, mostly as a result of the expansion westwards, the civil war, the 1880s boom, 1929 ect. but Britain has retained the same ruling elites throughout all this time.

As for it being easier under neoliberalism: i don't know either way tbh Benn's plan to erode the power of the established elite would have worked equally then as it would now, it is more that we are in a period of prolonged crisis (like the 1970s) where class contradictions are laid bare.

As for nostalgia for the social democratic golden age of the 1960s, I mean it is useful: the Benninite path would actually take us back to that kind of system for a bit as more worker control is implemented and the unions are reinforced, and most Old School SocDems are supportive of this kind of movement (Burnham for example). I wouldn't pick a fight with them, it's not worth it when they mostly agree on policy if not ideology.

But yeah, codifying Benninism into a set of principles, a method, and a set of policies could be useful for the left as a whole. I'd need to read far more of Benn and the surrounding work to get a proper place though.

>Tbh I mean more than just writing a Rafiq post about Benninism, but an actual tract laying out the basic tenets. I would need to read more though tbh, and formalise his stance on foreign policy (I think he was more of a vulgar pacifist in this area outside of his anti-colonialism).

That's fine, but I think it would be worthwhile to at least put down some of your thoughts as of now, and of benefit to the board as a whole, it encourages serious discussion and potential critiques and new ideas, whilst also providing a place to collaborate and collect literature and information. On your point about Benninisms Anti-Imperialism, I would say that's a perfect example of something that isn't really exhaustively covered within that theory and could be something to build upon beyond it's basic tenets.

>As for Benninism's inapplicability in other countries, you might be dead right: I mean one of Benn's points on democracy is that the same elite has ruled Britain for about 2 centuries (can't really say this of any other European state). I would also say that the American bourgeoisie has gone through several phases, mostly as a result of the expansion westwards, the civil war, the 1880s boom, 1929 ect. but Britain has retained the same ruling elites throughout all this time.

Ultimately I don't think Benninism is completely inapplicable in other places, just that it's quite historically contingent and not really a totalizing or universal ideology that could be applied to all Developed Western states that had the same post-war and post-crisis events, especially considering their relation to their own parliamentary or political systems. I'd imagine this has a lot to do with the Status of Britain's Constitutional Monarchy and in the minutae of how the British state has been managed historically, as you note. This rooting in the Historical Development of a specific nation means that these ideas won't translate with the same efficacy or political consequences in other places.

>As for it being easier under neoliberalism: i don't know either way tbh Benn's plan to erode the power of the established elite would have worked equally then as it would now, it is more that we are in a period of prolonged crisis (like the 1970s) where class contradictions are laid bare.

I don't neccessarily think it's /easier/ under neoliberalism, personally I'm not sure that "neoliberalism" is coherently defined and that as it functions now it's a nice narrative for the modern /left/ but this story is particularly reflective of what actually happened or has been happening. When you're talking about Neoliberalism Economically & Politically you're likely talking about different things; one being a concensus of the Failure of Keynesianism on account of the Ruling Class and a move back towards Neoclassical Economics (although arguably it's a fusion with Keynesianism when you look at how much of it has been maintained) and then on the other hand the neccessary dominant ideology of a post-fordist and more entrenched global Capitalism that arises out of a market oriented orthodoxy as part of the steps taken in order to restore FROP. They're interrelated but not quite the same and a flawed analysis of these events has led to a contemporary idea that Neoliberalism is an abberation to be overturned or rolled back to a time where things were perfectly functional; as if it was a conscious decision that wasn't taken out of neccessity based on some kind of malicious force as opposed to the logic of Capital itself. This mythical past never really existed, and this social democractic consensus is a false one that wasn't enacted from on high by abstract forces or groups of elites but was itself just another transient period of Capitalism that arose from the conditions of the aftermath of WW2 and the spectre of Communism from the USSR and "2nd World" more generally. The desire to return to something is indicative of a naive understanding of Capitalism and leads to the distortion of facts and events in order to fit a totalizing narrative that obscures Capitalism as the problem in favour of Neoliberalism. One particularly salient example of this is Kliman's research into "Wealth Inequality", whereby he discovered that the Stagnation of Wages only really started to significantly show losses for the Working Class in the wake of the 2008 Crisis and that they were buoyed by other forms of household income until then. It's this need to force all the analysis to fit to this narrative that I think whilst is useful politically to increase the consciousness of people more generally, it also must neccessarily be led into the next step beyond when it faces the harsh reality that the story doesn't really have an ending, you don't defeat the big bad Neoliberalism and return to an Idyllic SocDem paradise, the machinations of Capital don't allow for a transhistorical reality like that. I think this is where a lot of people will fail when they mobilize support in favour of this anti-Neoliberal narrative but soon come to realise that what they wish is not tenable, and it's at this juncture I think it's the most important duty of Communists to fill this void to ensure that this mobilized group doesn't have it's energy diverted to the forces of reaction.

>As for nostalgia for the social democratic golden age of the 1960s, I mean it is useful: the Benninite path would actually take us back to that kind of system for a bit as more worker control is implemented and the unions are reinforced, and most Old School SocDems are supportive of this kind of movement (Burnham for example). I wouldn't pick a fight with them, it's not worth it when they mostly agree on policy if not ideology.

In practice it would retain some of those elements yes but it wouldn't maintain the same teleology for lack of a better word. I think SocDems are useful because they almost dialectically progress the consciousness of the Working Class and set the stage for Communists so I would by no means actively work against them, just be aware of their limits and understand how to communicate them to both the Political Organizations and Working Class as a whole whilst leading them towards their inevitable rupture. In the meantime you can work with them to enact "non-reformist reforms" when neccessary.

>But yeah, codifying Benninism into a set of principles, a method, and a set of policies could be useful for the left as a whole. I'd need to read far more of Benn and the surrounding work to get a proper place though.

Yeah I think I'd need to do this too as my understanding of it is tertiary at best right now, part of the reason I suggested a thread

Looks like the GJ fucking with infrastructure has started to inspire local cells.

>All flights at Gatwick Airport are still grounded almost 12 hours after drones were first spotted buzzing near the airfield, throwing the early Christmas getaway into chaos.

>The disruption affecting tens of thousands of travellers - including stranded children and parents forced to sleep on seats overnight - could last several more hours until it is safe to reopen the airport's lone runway.

>Flights in and out of the airport were suspended at about 9pm on Wednesday after two drones were sighted near the airfield in West Sussex.

>Gatwick - the busiest single runway airport in the world - resumed operations at about 3am on Thursday, but just 45 minutes later closed the runway again after drones were spotted again in the middle of the night.

>The runway is expected to remain closed until at least 8am, but there are fears it could go on for hours more as armed police and a helicopter search for the drone pilots, who were still buzzing the airport at 7am.

Had a lol at some genius in the comments suggesting to ban flying drones over airports, someone should put this guy in charge.

I mean after the entire Anti-Semitism debacle most people are pretty immune to transparent stuff like this, it's just dishonest when the right pretends to care about misogyny because half of them would have said stupid woman anyway.

One of the problems with the media is that they're more or less all in the same class and all the same people.

From their perspective, literally everyone does care what Corbyn said. It's not really a conspiracy - I mean, there are some dodgy things going on at other times - but with stupid things like this, it's a few Tory MPs acting in bad faith and a small social circle imagining it actually matters.

As a social class they (and the entire Blair project) were identified and skewered perfectly by a former Labour MP in the late 90s:

>These people had always had a problem with Labour. They did not like Labour's sharp edges. They voted Labour in a good year, but also flirted with the Liberals, might even have supported a liberal Tory, and enthusiastically supported the Social Democrats for a time. They are found disproportionately among the liberal professions, the universities and the media. They are people who love to, and are often paid to, think, talk and write about politics.

>Peter Mandelson, as Routledge's book shows, understands this world very well. It is his world. It is in numerical terms a small world, but it is disproportionately important in shaping the political agenda. It is also a world which, despite its smallness, has the self-confidence (not to say arrogance) to believe that it is all there is, or at least all that matters. (It is one of the paradoxes of a complex society like Britain that it is possible to have an existence which is almost completely insulated against the lives and experiences of large numbers of other and different people.)

>What is Bennism's plan for dealing with the inevitable capital strike/market crash

Well Benn planned mass nationalisations of the 250 largest companies and financial institutions as a part of the AES. It also involved currency controls to try and prevent movement of large quantities of currency out the country. There is also a slight advantage we have today in the significant percentage of financial institutions with partial government ownership. There's also one feature of proposed capital flight people never talk about: that the mass investment into infrastructure is often highly popular in primary and secondary industries. They found in Ecuador during the pink tide that despite doubling taxes across the board, they increased their DFI because their investments in infrastructure were immensely attractive.

>and the Very British Coup scenario in general?

I mean that's the irony: AVBC was written about a hypothetical Benn Premiership…

>I wish they would leave quicker. But this is good news. I love seeing Lib-Dems defending him as a "principled man" not realising his is a sex pest

Honestly when all these people run and the national lib dems stand aside for them the members are really going to be pissed off. Should be quite funny watching the backlash.

>What is even happening, why don't they shoot them down or something, and who is even behind this it just seems too much of a dick move for even environmentalists?

Issue with shooting them is that A) they are legally classed as aircraft B) they might not know where they are C) they may have explosives on (not likely but they have to treat it as such). As for who is behind this, I imagine doomer pranksters tbh.

Wasn't he the bloke that tried to blow up inspection authorities over "Muh Orwellianism" (ironically this was during Blair era surveillance but the fucking Food Standard Agency is not the police state).

No he was some sted head that got mad as fuck at the police for fucking his ex-gf and went around shooting cops with a shotgun, the RAF were called in to hunt him down and it was this whole big affair.

Gazza turned up hammered at some point with some beers and rang up the news to ask Raoul to come down and have some drinks and talk it out.

Yeah it seems a involved to be a prank, gatwick airport is fucking massive, even the best consumer tier drone has nowhere near the range to cover that amount of airspace, a good one could do maybe half that range if the operator was controlling it from inside the airport grounds, in which case they would have found him and introduced him to constable dixon's van of rape

Its got to be a big commercial drone, the sort of thing surveying companies or news agencies use instead of helicopters, no way a couple of pissed off teens are getting the money together to buy one of those, nevermind the knowhow to get one and not get noticed for the purchase

The government have confirmed it is a commercial drone: although tbh I imagine there are pretty easy ways of getting one without being noticed, I mean they are hardly things that need to be tracked compared to say, batch ammonia & bleach purchases.

Also indications are that there may be more than one of these ("they reappear"), which would suggest some serious level of organisation: hence why I am thinking radeco collective or something.

Still honestly, it is a kinda cunty move: i've been stuck places trying to get home for christmas and it's kinda shit.

>No one is going to listen to them if they cant get home for christmas

This is the same bullshit excuse that would be hauled out if there was a threat of a strike tbf.

Incidentally

who else remembers in 2016 when there was going to be a post office strike and also a flight attendant's strike or something so all the Tory press came out saying we needed even tougher restrictions on trade unions due to the impending winter of discontent 2.0, only for literally nothing to happen?

Britain has technically passed the deadline for withdrawal from the European Union without a deal. No world leaders appear to have noticed due to a much more pressing crisis, which has drawn together NATO, the Commonwealth of Independent States, China, ANZUS, ECOMOG, COPAX, the Rio Pact states, the Eastern Caribbean Regional Security System, BRICS and the Common Security and Foreign Policy of the European Union, with a joint North Korean-Iranian engineering delegation currently en-route via land transportation.

Their collective mission: To locate and arrest the person who has been flying a drone over the runways at London Gatwick airport for the past 102 days.

>Issue with shooting them is that A) they are legally classed as aircraft B) they might not know where they are C) they may have explosives on (not likely but they have to treat it as such). As for who is behind this, I imagine doomer pranksters tbh.

Not to mention that they might miss the drone and a stray bullet could hit someone

If your talking about the stuff in the news recently its just the media trying to piss off hard core europhiles by pointing out what labours policy is. Note it has always been Labours policy to respect the referendum and not push for a second one unless all else fails since the conference. Everyone is just trying to kick up a huge fuss about stuff which was known about in 2016.

I mean both of them are fundamentally good people, and actually believe in humanism & democracy. I think that's why Clegg's betrayal was so deep and scathing: because the two men that came before him would have never dared to think about that.

So they arrested this poor fucker (and his wife) purely because he a) likes drones and b) lives near Gatwick? And the press plastered their names and faces everywhere with the accusations that they were criminals? They should be able to sue, but I suppose they aren't.

Tbf he is being accused of flying a drone: hardly anything that damaging. And whether he can sue will depend on how the papers reported it: I imagine a few of the tabloids will have fucked up in a way that will let them do them in.

This honestly is getting stranger by the day, if I were more conspiratorial I'd say because of the scale of the disruption and the coincidences surrounding no evidence of any drones being flown and this new story about regulation being ignored I'd say it was intentionally created in order to retable said regulation. Drones are becoming more and more available to a civilian populace; and they will be pivotal in any kind of Civil Conflict scenario, perhaps it's a measure against unrest if No Deal Brexit occurs? Still it could also just be some idiots fucking around but there are bunch of things that line up conviniently.

Depends what you want to do. If you need a Mortgage go Nationwide because it isn't an investment bank, or for other stuff Coop because it's "ethical investments" also tend to be really super fucking safe. They also have all their other services to bail them out from as opposed to just financial instruments.

I'm with Lloyds atm, I think I'm gonna be okay but still might start moving some cash around.

Tbh the chance of a Northern Rock happening again is so low because if the banks fail the government owns so much of them it will likely nationalise them all anyways. Legit we could have state control of most of the City's capital by the end of 2019, what a fucking time to be alive.

Can someone explain how we can aim this peoples vote meme. Its really pissing me off seeing people who could have become good comrades being taken in by this unholy alliance of Blairites, liberals and metropolitan Torys

i'm not even fundamentally opposed to it (because i've been apathetic to the whole brexit thing and a multiple choice ranked preference vote doesn't hit me as necessarily being a bad idea in principle.) but my impression is they simply don't have the momentum to actually achieve what the want.

i get the feeling if they'd sold it as a chance to punt may's deal to the people, they might've had a better chance. as it stands, i can think of nobody who supports leaving and supports a people's vote to confirm that and decide how it's done.

Yeah I just get pissed when I see the fucked up takes you see on twitter.

I went to my local momentum group half expecting the students there to be shitty Europhile but was presently surprised that all of them were at least anti-EU with most of them saying they would vote leave if there was a second ref.

The maths have been done numerous times and it doesn't look like it can, everyone hates it.

>I seriously think we are seeing the end of the Tory party.

Correct, the situation as it is doesn't allow for an extension of article 50 and what will happen when we reach March is that we exit the EU by default, the military is put on the streets, and everyone sees "Martial Law = Tory Britain"

maybe it's just that i secretly wish i was from a normal country but i really fucking hate middle-class British europhiles who think they're internationalists.

being a masochist, i've been to a bunch of people's vote meetings and i always get that vibe, a bunch of arrogant british twats who think that because their worldview extends as far as costa del sol they're suddenly outward looking, cultured and progressive rather than being just as parochial as people who distrust those from different cities but much more insufferable.

i'm kind of fascinated by british arrogance. on the real left, it exists in an interesting way. i'm not sure how to put it, even though there's a loathing for british imperialism, it's still kind of woven into british life that it exists, that it shares some tradition with the radical-liberal tradition of the past, etc. there's even interesting idealist moments like CND at one point imagining that if Britain gave up nukes, the rest of the world would see such a reputable nation as Britain doing it and conclude they could safely do likewise - arrogant, but in a completely inoffensive and almost charming way. i say that not to be insulting, but just to kind of set the scene for how british people see the world.

anyway, having some sympathies for a united europe (as a superpower with a British vassal, hey, beats the yanks), i'm fascinated by the arrogance of the blairite wing of europhiles. these are people who may like the undemocratic elements of the EU and the touchy language they wrap their message in, but they've still got britain's awkward relationship to the institution at their hearts - most of them hold risible ideas in their head, that Britain could lead Europe and show them how it's done. it's a much more offensive kind of arrogance, the project of european unity needs British leadership like Yugoslavia needed nationalism. If britain wants a role, the only safe role is for it to sit at the back, shut the fuck up and do what it's told. But the thing is, it's not about what Britain can do for Europe (not fuck it up), it's what Europe can do for Britain that drives these people. It can make us more cultured, more refined, more intellectual, it can connect the comfortable middle classes of the continent in sneering anti-democratic contempt for the great unwashed. It's a cultural shibboleth, not a political project.

i don't know i did this stream of consciousness and i can see it doesn't make much sense but i might as well [new reply]

Hang on a minute, are you telling me that the Banking system being parasitically irresponsible could actually lead to Nationalization of Investment? Big if true, I would have just assumed the state would cuck again and let them maintain control but this seems like the best possible pretext to doing it. People like Roberts and even Cockshott (I might be wrong here but I think he mentioned it in one of his videos on Socialist Strategy for Britain) have long said it's neccessary.

Well the thing is ordinary people will be calling for it: the bailout of the banks in 2008 in the eyes of many is what was expected to turn into nationalisation of the financial markets, naturally this did not occur.

But think about it, say there is another 2008 style crash, McDonnell says "we'll lock up the bastards and nationalise the banks": do you think that would popular? Like hell it would be. People who hate Labour from their blood would agree with that sentiment if they fucked over the economy again (well obvious they didn't, the inherent contradictions of capitalism did, but w/e). And what are the banks going to do? Default? Flee with their negative assets?

Nah, we are on the verge of mass expropriation of capital and various sections of the MoP: this is the fucking time buckos.

Ironically if we had stayed in Britain would have been the most powerful country in the EU by 2050, eu parliament seat allocation is based on population and the UK is on course to outstrip germany's population sometime in the 2040's

Yeah even though I was a teenager at the time I remember some stuff about it, but it honestly sounds too good to be true, and this is coming from someone who has made posts on here talking about how orthodox Social Democracy actually has revolutionary potential because of it being absolutely untenable to go back to a perceived golden age that never existed at this stage of Capitalism, given the inability of "Neoliberalism" and the Neoclassical/Keynesian fusion economics of the 70's until now to assuage the Contradictions and restore profitability.

I don't know how to describe it. It's just this massive awareness that although I have so many little policy disagreements with the "normal" momentum left and even the /leftybritpol/ crowd's diverse opinions, I've just got this overwhelming feeling of appreciation that some people have their heart in the right place, that they're making the effort, doing the thinking, that even if they're wrong in policy you can hold a conversation and feel like you're learning something new, or just enjoying company knowing that for some people politics are more than an aesthetic version of procurement management, without the Blairite cliqueism that dominates(/dominated) so many labour groups, or the outright cultism that dominated so many other organisations.

Merry Christmas to you too fellow britanon, I really get what you are feeling. I go to my CLP, and I see normal people who are thinking with the kind of radicalism that would make Nye Bevan proud. There is hope for this country, and however shit things see I think we will look back at now as the period when the basis for a new world was built.

Merry marxmad British tovarishs'. I wish you a productive struggle. Also I am a bit jelly that you get to have an actual leftist leadership in your socdem party. And thst you are so close at exiting the neoliberal selftoeture chamber.

That being said that's mostly just from what I've read & heard about IPPR, just had a gander at her twitter and she seems like she's got her head screwed on and is probably also a genuine Marxist. Guess we'll wait and see

white hot take: real keynesianism and marxism aren't as opposed as they seem and operate on a useful spectrum/continuum that maps relatively neatly onto time horizons. which one people focus on says more about their personality type than it does about their politics.

(i mean this in such a specific way when it comes to the worldview of political economists and historians that i'm not even sure it's possible to avoid misinterpretation. i should also add that when i say "their politics", i mean "who's side they'd break for in a crisis" much more than "what they're doing right now".)

Bad take purely because Keynesianism at its fundamentality is a liberal economic system: it views the individual as most important unit of the economic system (in this case, as a consumer that needs to be provided with wealth to continue aggregate consumption). Marxism on the other hand is a socialist one, viewing labour as the most important unit, compare it with Georgism which also sees labour as the most important unit (although in a different way, as it values productive labour outside of natural resources as the means to drive the economy). You cannot reconcile the two, although certain policies may overlap.

Cockshott isn't an ML though, if anything he's closer to a Leftcom. Personally I think there are issues on both sides because it seems as though Paul isn't that interested in getting directly involved in the Corbyn project and I have a feeling that any official hand extended to him will be met with a lot of autistic screeching about TERFs and such. That being said there should absolutely be a push for Labour to become more integrated with Cybernetics and the session put on at TWT is a good start.

Cockshott was a member of the COBI which was an ML group notable for being a breakoff of the BICO: and both of their ML USPs were that they supported NI Unionism. It was ML in its outlook (as opposed to trot, which was the main communist tendency of the time).

As for Labour and Cybernetics, well I've heard rumours that a Cybernetics working group might be established, there was a lot of hype after the TWT lecture as you said along with other various kinds of technosocialism/communisms being bandied around. Also the New Statesman writer George Eaton took a liking to it. Honestly it might be possible to set-up a working group within the party: I'd certainly join. I mean Cybernetics is not a first-term project for the Labour Party, that is undoing austerity and laying out the foundations for effectively a new social democratic system with self management characteristics. I think there is something to be had with looking at Cybernetics for logistical elements of the welfare state (thinking NHS provisionment of resources here), but we are not going to see a Cybernetic economy introduced by Labour in a first term in office.

Although you're right that Paul isn't too keen getting involved and maintains a kinda close distance: he is not opposed ideologically to Benninism (in-fact his socialist strategy videos are pretty Benninite in their outlook) but I think he rightfully views the Corbyn project as something that it is worth maintaining a clear ideological critique of.

Oh yeah no ofc he was in an ML group, I'm just saying that I don't think you could characterize his positions as orthodox ML, although, given the Trot history of the UK, as you noted, he's clearly more aligned with ML than Trotskyism if those are your 2 serious options.

I hadn't heard about the potential for a working group nor about the New Statesman, that's very interesting, I think if such a thing did happen it would be impossible to do so whilst sidestepping Paul so that's promising. Yeah I think there is a lot of Benninism (As an aside /leftybritpol/ really needs to start memeing Marxism-Benninism) in his Socialist Strategy videos although I'm not sure there's much of a direct relationship between the two, it's more just that their approaches have led them to similar conclusions. I would agree that the maintenance of a critique is important, I just question whether that neccessitates a distance at all, ultimately a few thousand people paying attention to him isn't getting his critique as many eyeballs as a closer relationship would.

Im coming to the end of my degree soon. Does anyone here have a job in the left or know how one goes about getting a job that actively pushes left wing politics. I want to stay clear of becoming a politician or journalist but would be interested in doing advisor or management stuff for the Labour party or Labour councils. I'm doing a maths degree so I can understand quite a bit of economics fairly easily I just don't want to end up in some shitty job feeling like I'm not contributing.

I mean they are doing Land Reform that is what would take place in South Africa if not for Reactionaries and I remember some Zionist was bitching about them talking about how evil Israel is. It seems kinda strange as to why Nobility would be that way but then again the Nordic Countries are literal Monarchies and they have a big history of being Left with the PM of Sweden supporting the Vietcong in their war.

What is the politics of Yes Minister? Seems like anti-labour with portrayal of trade unions and labour in general. A lot of people like Thatcher liked it, even Dorothy in Yes Prime Minister is like Thatcher in ideals and personality.

What >>2771373 with the added elements that a lot of peers are added to represent "institutions" (the NHS, the fire service, police schools ect.) and they tend to be socdem because they like it when their things are funded. Also the lords spiritual tend to be pretty left-wing economically because that is a feature of the Church of England inherently.

And what did you mean by:

>I mean they are doing Land Reform that is what would take place in South Africa

>What is the politics of Yes Minister? Seems like anti-labour with portrayal of trade unions and labour in general. A lot of people like Thatcher liked it, even Dorothy in Yes Prime Minister is like Thatcher in ideals and personality.

It's basically anti-bureaucratic and anti-[contemporary] establishment: which is why a Trot and Neoliberal could love it (since a lot of neoliberal criticisms of the state come from trotskyism).

>In 2007 Jay criticised the anti-establishment thinking of the BBC and similar media outlets such as The Guardian, claiming that the opinions of BBC staff "were at odds with the majority of the audience and the electorate".[6]

Yes Minister is excellent comedy, but the underlying ideology is very specific - it's public choice theory.

>The fallacy that public choice economics took on was the fallacy that government is working entirely for the benefit of the citizen; and this was reflected by showing that in any [episode] in the programme, in Yes Minister, we showed that almost everything that the government has to decide is a conflict between two lots of private interest – that of the politicians and that of the civil servants trying to advance their own careers and improve their own lives. And that's why public choice economics, which explains why all this was going on, was at the root of almost every episode of Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.

The great irony of public choice theory being that all it's managed to do is add even more fucking managers.

It's also got a wonderfully Thatcherite undertone - and I'll clarify what I mean by that. In more liberal circles, it's very popular to imagine Thatcher as a posh woman, the kind of person who'd cut Sir Humprhrey's budget but gladly sit beside him at the opera or the ballet. She wasn't posh gentry, she was a petit-bourgoise philistine. The underappreciated element of Thatcherism is a punchy, anti-high-cultural populism, and that undertone of populist contempt is preserved in Yes Minister. There's a ton of interesting historical context for that (basically a view that Britain had become too intellectual, too contemplative, too artsy, and had lost her industrial vigour.) which I'm unfortunately unable to articulate appropriately. It's an undertone that runs through The Sun and The Daily Mail to this day, and it's a good bit of why people still hate the BBC - even though it gets trashier by the year, it's still got a bit of that old paternalist approach to it, which you don't get with Sky or something, which is the kind of channel that cuts arts subsidies to give to Football. (tut tut.)

Also, excellent real life comedy note: new Labour types loved it as well. When new Labour took office, they unironically thought the real sir Humphrey was going to appear and frustrate everything they tried to do almost 1:1 with the show.

Frankly, I'm not sure why they were afraid of the civil service helping them to implement their promise to continue the Major project but with a creepier man at the top.

footnote: I wonder when exactly Thatcher realised her project of restoring Victorian industrial vigour was perhaps the most dismal policy failure in British history and shifted over to creating a financial services economy instead.

>footnote: I wonder when exactly Thatcher realised her project of restoring Victorian industrial vigour was perhaps the most dismal policy failure in British history and shifted over to creating a financial services economy instead.

About 1982: when the economy was doing fucking shit and everyone hated her. After the 1983 election, she had a free reign to do what she wanted and she realised to break trade union power, she would need to break british industrial power: that's when she pivoted to fucking over the automotive, mining, and docking industries in this country.

You know what I am starting to change my mind on Bastani and the whole Novara lot: they seem to have been consumed by their own posting and think it in of itself is some great praxis. Also how they are trying to pull the "we're cool and hip but also respectable" shit is really fucking disingenuous.

I thought they were perhaps a means to radicalise young people and teach them some theory but it appears one of their main things is just to beef centrists on twitter: which is fine if you are like Chapo and your existence is just to shitpost but when you are trying to be a serious news organisation it comes off as fucking meaningless. If your praxis is posting, you are a fucking failure at moving the dialectic towards anything.

Ah see I don't use twitter so I haven't seen it but yeah this is basically just the same criticism that this entire board has of ecelebs in the leftoid twitter sphere, except more on the nose with owning the libs. Not sure why you thought Novara was ever really going to radicalise or teach theory to younger people though; the majority of their "content" isn't really geared towards anything like that, it's mostly just varying quality punditry on current affairs with the shows/podcasts, in fact I've only ever seen Aaron make any reading recommendations at all, apart from him & Butler they're all nobooks pretty much.

Also as an aside I wouldn't worry about it too much as long as it doesn't start to spill over into the actual news content; you have to realise that pretty much everyone who is active on twitter tends to shitpost because of the way that the structure of the platform exists; I mean it's the entire reason that "takes" garnered so much memetic potential. There's simply no need to hold themselves to any higher standard because literally everyone in the media sphere consistently gets into stupid exchanges on the platform and it's all very quickly forgotten about. There's no need to play respectability politics, it gets you nowhere and gotchas like that only ever be applied selectively regardless and if anything oftentimes only humanize them more (someone who doesn't like someone will see some out of context tweet and just reinforce their belief, someone with no opinion doesn't care much either way). You're going to get quotemined no matter what you do so any possible concerns any of us might have had on that front aren't quite so pressing. I agree that "posting", let alone "shitposting" is a massively vacuous waste of energy that only appeals to very specific cliques of people that we don't really want in any central position in a movement though so that criticism still holds. Radlibs who spend all day shitposting on twitter do not revolutionaries make.

the talent vacuum in Scottish politics is making me incredibly arrogant

there isn't an MSP I couldn't outsmart politically and trounce rhetorically and that's not because i'm particularly smart or articulate. it's like a pick'n'mix of managerial local councillors.

i mean, the scottish parliament is an inherently managerial institution without economic power, so it's a given it will mould people into management, but presenting a budget accountability commission as a parliament is the most tedious thing on the planet. you'd have more fun and get more done by being one of the 3 token opposition members in a corrupt junta's parliament.

Yeah, outside of Sturgeon and Davidson, they are all damp squibs: and the reason they aren't is because they are forceful Quinnes, not because they are some great statesmen.

Also there is an issue with recruitment pool and people moving "upstairs": there's a reason the SNP has the most Scottish personalities (they are the largest party by a country mile) but even them are found mostly in Westminster (the second issue). I mean unless you are the leader of the SNP there is no treason for you to remain in Holyrood: the tories have even talked of bunging Davidson dun tae London once she is done with her maternity leave.

Compare this with Wales, which while has no recognition outside of the country itself has a load of forceful figures in the Seanad itself.

Corbyn has a good personality and he's the best candidate who's stood but

*looks left*

*looks right*

hmm… no blairites…

*whispers* i don't really think he's a leader, he's not exactly a trojan horse for other people either, but he's the person who has to occupy the leaders seat in order to ensure an agenda where socialism and old-style social democracy get a voice. he's sort of an agent of destabilisation that prevents a return to toxic "normality". at the same time his comparative ineffectiveness perhaps works to his advantage. like in that execrable "if corbyn was PM" fanfiction written by the daily mail, he eventually falls because he was "too decent" to go full red terror and gulags. it's hard to imagine McDonnell being treated similarly. He comes across as more forceful, as someone who might actually send in the tanks.

But for what it's worth i think British Politics is completely devoid of leaders on all sides. I'd say there's been a constant talent drain since the 1980s.

Which kind of works to Corbyn's advantage. Because the quality of MP has declined rapidly, a 1980s rabble-rousing backbencher is now amongst the highest quality material available. There simply isn't anyone better, even casting aside ideology, even looking at the tory benches and thinking which of them'd make a good front bencher.

and i mean sure, a lot of them are perfectly nice people, a lot of them have perfectly good politics, but you can't really look at the current cabinet and shadow cabinet and seriously argue they're just as skilled as the ones we've had in years past.

maybe it's just another element of neoliberalism castrating political power, an intentional element of the project or a screw-up. maybe it's "the meritocracy" at work. i don't know.

One of the best and worst things about him is how kind/soft/understanding he is, it gives an aura of "the nice grandad" vibe. On one hand it means he can brush off any smear, it also means he is very good at connecting with real people, especially apolitical ones. On the other hand it means that a lot of the reform the Labour party needs to be a proper socialist movement (ie purging Blairites) hasn't happened. He (rather stupidly) believe he could make peace with the right of the party after the second leadership bid and since then really hasn't done anything about the issue. Currently it feels like his policy is to ignore them until they shut up or leave. Which I guess is sort of working quite a few have left now.

I remember Brit SocDem Poster saying something to this effect, but adding that Labour's 2010-onwards intake and Miliband's rejection of Blairism ideologically actually allowed a lot of talent to rise-up throughout that period: Rayner being the best example of this.

I mean from a standpoint those ads made sense from the standpoint of getting working class lads to join the navy because "you're not doing anything fucking else and you'll get skills even though you were too thick for uni". Like there was some logic behind that, even if they were shite they made sense. This, this is just "what the actual fuck?". My mate who is actually trying to join the army is looking at this and is honestly baffled about how this got passed proposal.

when they were handing out leaflets for RAF university squadrons at my university they tried to hand one to everyone around me except me so the next labour government better cut their budget to the point they'll have to beg, steal and borrow from the royal navy to fly so much as a paper aeroplane.

is that the one where they spent loads of money to re-wing and re-engine ancient planes rather than designing a new one or buying yank ones, then it turned out rebuilding a plane older than the prime minister was a bit hard so it went way over budget and was later than the average northern train, and then finally when they got it working they scrapped it, leaving us in the laughable position of being a maritime nation with less maritime patrol planes than ireland.

so now we're buying a yank plane.

(lmao i looked it up to check if i had the gist of that down right, they asked for proposals for what would become the new nimrod in 1988, the thing was marketed as the nimrod 2000 and it didn't get into the air even on test-flights until 2004, and when they finally dragged the old nimrods in to modify them "BAE discovered that the Nimrod airframes supplied by the RAF were not built to a common standard and this considerably complicated the refurbishment process.")

That's not even the worst part: in ~2009 the RAF had two functioning Nimrods, a load on order under construction or in testing, and had specially built a proper 1:1 flight sim for the plane in RAF Lossiemouth (I went there when I was a wee toot). Then in 2010 they turned around and said "nope, scrap the whole thing". They had a fucking 1:1 flight sim ready, and scrapped the entire project.

If that doesn't exemplify the decay of British imperial power I do not know what does.

Also yeah, the country with the second largest navy in the world doesn't even have any fucking naval bombers great work lads.

He's not got the killer instinct a leader really needs, he's a nice man and an experienced politician but he doesn't know when to put the boot in and when to play nice, take PMQ's for example, may is the softest target an opposition leader has had since the 60's and he still flounders about, this anti-Semitism thing should have been nixed in five minutes too but he's incapable of riposting well enough to kill it

Ordinarily he would have never have managed to become leader, he only made it because of the extreme (even by British standards) contempt the blairite leadership he deposed showed for the party rank and file

I don't think so. The media was going to run with it no matter what he did. His error was to make concessions as if there was any way of appeasing his enemies.

>Ordinarily he would have never have managed to become leader

It was only chance that led to Corbyn in particular being leader. In 2015 it was his turn to run as the Left's token candidate. In 2010 it was Abbott, in 2007 it was McDonnell. In hindsight it's obvious that OMOV was going to make it very possible to elect a left-winger in 2015 but I'm not sure if he or his allies knew that at the time.

Well on the 2017 thing, they didn't actually expect to even get Corbyn on the ballot: it was a real last minute squeaky-bumtime thing.

As for anti-semitism, apparently Corbyn had a bit of a mini breakdown over the whole thing since he was so emotionally upset: but it's interesting how that the summer is now over it has all evaporated…

I think they didnt realise how fed up the general party membership was with the status-quo. No one cares about the anti-Semitism thing apart from: people who already hated him; the media class social bubble.

I still fucking love that the Blairite expectation was we'd get primaries like the US democrats and ensure the public always locked the left out of power because that's what sensible centrists want, only to discover the only people who care enough about the labour leadership to pay the price of a freddo to influence it are - jesus christ who could have known! - leftists.

once that fact became known i think it had a sort of immenantisation/possibilisation effect. i don't think either of those are real words, but that's what i'd call it. basically, corbyn as leader appeared impossible and therefore was not possible - until something came along to change the consensus that it was a vague possibility, then an outside chance, then a damn near certainty. in the same way one could argue the SNP polling 50% and getting everyone talking about an SNP win was a necessary precursor to that happening in 2015.

Tbf Burnham was meant to be the originally "left-wing" candidate of it, considering he did second best I imagine he rode a decent amount on the coattails of Corbyn.

But honestly one of the funniest things is how the melts go around saying "REE WHY ISN'T X LEADER!?!??!" and I saw it with Yvette Cooper once: and it result with a load of people saying "she lost in 2015 that's why" then the melt got fucking trigger was "I KNOW IT WAS RHETORICAL".

Why should five hundred or six hundred titled persons govern us, and why should their children govern our children for ever? I invite a reply from the apologists and the admirers of the House of Lords. I invite them to show any ground of reason, or of logic, or of expediency or practical common sense in defence of the institution which has taken the predominant part during the last few days in the politics of our country. There is no defence, and there is no answer, except that the House of Lords…has survived out of the past. It is a lingering relic of a feudal order. It is the remains, the solitary reminder of a state of things and of a balance of forces which has wholly passed away. I challenge the defenders, the backers, and the instigators of the House of Lords—I challenge them to justify and defend before the electors of the country the character and composition of the hereditary assembly…

The House of Lords have only been tolerated all these years because they were thought to be in a comatose condition which preceded dissolution. They have got to dissolution now. That this body, utterly unrepresentative, utterly unreformed, should come forward and claim the right to make and unmake Governments, should lay one greedy paw on the prerogatives of the sovereign and another upon the established and most fundamental privileges of the House of Commons is a spectacle which a year ago no one would have believed could happen; which fifty years ago no Peer would have dared suggest; and which two hundred years ago would not have been discussed in the amiable though active manner of a political campaign, but would have been settled by charges of cavalry and the steady advance of iron-clad pikemen.

"All civilization", said Lord Curzon, quoting Renan, "all civilization has been the work of aristocracies". … It would be much more true to say "The upkeep of aristocracies has been the hard work of all civilizations".

surprisingly based stuff from the man who would go on to be one of the worst chancellors in British history.

So considering I reached the realisation that Piers Morgan is Boomer-outrage personified, it made me realise that American representations of generation don't really work for Britain, so we kinda need to draw our own. I was thinking of starting with this:

Era of Despair: 1994-present (turned 4 when Blair took office, lived under Blairism and Austerity). Any other anons want to help me fill-out a proper british generational epochs?

not a big fan of Scotland's continual cutesy reference to immigrants as "new" scots as a way of marking themselves more tolerant than nasty old England.

i know i'm just projecting my own pathological inability to deal with being considered an outsider*, but it really rubs me the wrong way. polling data shows scottish people expect scottish parentage or scottish birth to consider you scottish. moving over from france at age 20, naturalising in the UK and currently being 60 isn't going to cut it. "new" Scot is a polite way to hint towards a not Scot, or if you want to be polite, to say that you have the potential to birth Scots, but will not yourself ever be considered a Scot. It may well be true that Scotland is on average less anti-immigration than England - but that doesn't erase that their civic nationalism is as closed to newcomers who want to naturalise rather than merely co-exist as any ethnic nationalism. The fact it may not come from a position of hostility is perhaps even more risky - it just normalises the nationalist spook that there's something fundamental in there which is innate and cannot be adopted by outsiders.

At the same time maybe I'm taking it too seriously. Maybe it's just language used to invite people in awkwardly adopted for a few people who don't want to drop their first nationality and everyone reflexively refers to the remainder of cases as scots, even if when they stop to answer the yougov bloke those people don't come to mind.

*not an immigrant or descended from recent immigrants, it's a more general distaste for that kind of thing, a sort of tokenism, middle-class exclusionism and politely wrapped weirdness.

combined with the fact i entertained the idea of moving to Australia during one particularly cold winter as a NEET, but i gave up when i realised i'd probably still be an expat and a pom even if i got citizenship.

As an immigrant, for some reason, I've always disliked the attempts to 'include' me as British/English/Whatever. Let's be real, I'm visibly different, and it's kind of an 'emperor's new clothes' situation to pretend otherwise.

I'd rather just be left to my own devices, preferably not be killed or beaten, and that'll be that.

I wouldn't say that the "you're born a scot" thing is necessarily ethnic: I mean nobody thinks the Irish immigrants to Glasgow "aren't scottish". I think it is less about your lineage as a bloodline and more about where you were born and to whom: a strange mix of the land and blood rites to citizenship as it were.

I can kinda see where you're coming from, like my mum's a pure-blooded scot but I was born and raised in England. My mother tried to raise me in a Scottish way (haggis, needs, and tatties on Burn's night, frequent visits to Scotland, supporting Scotland in the rugby) but if someone asked I would always say british. I'm in the weird zone where I don't feel english, but I'm not really a proper scot. I'm left floating in this weird zone, not helped by having a scottish name (which someone from Barnsley called "right posh" which made me kek. Yeah, like 10% of the people in Paisley are called this but it's "posh"). Still, by Scottish standards I am more Scottish than someone that has moved and lived there for 20 years. It is a weird feeling, one I don't think I'll ever get around to resolving.

You know I saw some interesting poll-aggregating the other day: that among people that didn't vote in the 2016 referendum most people would vote Labour. Maybe Labour do have this the wrong way around: instead of appealing to leavers or remainers they should be looking at non-voters.

>A military force with some 4 centuries of activity, credited with: the development of the first standing force in Europe, the conquest of 1/4tr of the world's landmass, having being one of the first armies to use industrialised elements, having created the tank, help developed one of the major air forces in the world, fighting and winning four global conflicts (7 years war, Napoleonic Wars, WWI, WWII), with effective constant military activity since the 1860s, songs & standards recognisable around the world, and perhaps the highest level of consistent prestige in modern military history

You lot should watch the news coming out of Westminster tomorrow: apparently a load of Tommy Thugs went around shouting at politicians to their faces and it is pretty likely A) a poli donks one of them (oh how I miss Prescott) or B) the bolice do. Could get some spicy news.

They've gotten more desperate, recruitment and retention has plummeted since the last strategic defence review and they don't know how to pump the numbers up, with low morale and negative publicity from clusterfucks being leaked to the media (the one about the food was particularly memeworthy, Capita should all be hanged)

Add onto that there's no active combat at the minute which always leads to a drop in numbers, the last few wars have all been unpopular which hurts recruitment as well and the army is really, really struggling to fill the ranks, which is compounded by it being simultaneously the least attractive service and the one that needs the most manpower (Navy and Airforce both have better career progression and from the outside at least often seem to have better posting opportunity, they both have better quality of life)

>During the Cabinet discussion, Mr Gove - who was a prominent Leave campaigner during the referendum - said MPs waiting for the perfect Brexit were "like mid-50s swingers waiting for Scarlett Johansson to turn up".

A lot of the ERG will back-down when it comes to it, like 10-20 will vote against it tops. Also it is expected that a chunk of Labour MPs will abstain (especially if there is a second vote). I think the deal will get passed, but it will fucking nuke politics as we know it.

Also there is a chance Corbyn will adopt a second referendum as a last resort and it failing, which would make me kek.

Apparently the government was "willing to take the hit", but yeah this is an act that has brought the house together (it was signed by both brexiteer and remainer MPs, Blairites, Tories, Corbynites, ScotsNats and Liberals).

Also the bill itself merely means in case of a no deal the PM cannot change taxation without parliamentary approval.

The bill stated that the PM cannot "Henry the VIIIth" through financial instruments relating to the EU and taxation without said power being granted to it by parliament if there is a no deal.

In effect, it means that if there is a no deal parliament can cuck the PM out of emergency tax powers which it would need to ensure the government has enough money to physically do shit. As such it makes a "managed no deal" far more difficult since things like VAT cannot be changed (atm the EU is worded into the legislation that ensures VAT is a thing).

Ironically this helps May's cause to get her deal signed because the tory backbenchers that want a "managed no deal" will see this and be like "fuck well if this puts an end to that, might-as-well vote for the deal", eroding it away to only the diehard no dealers (Mogg et motley crewe).

So Bercow just did a thing by letting an amendment be voted on against the government's will and it won, apparently this is important constitutionally yet despite my grip of it I have no fucking idea what exactly happened. Pic unrelated.

>Your idea of class is politically and demographically outdated, 14% of the country is traditional working class down from 49.8% in 2000.

Was reading up on the retarded liberal takes on Brexit and found this absolute fucking whopper of tl;dr retardation. Unfortunately I'm shadowbanned so my newest account and comment insulting him for being retarded doesn't exist. So I'm showing it to you all. He goes on later to say that, actually, Marx was wrong because he didn't know what the middle class was, and that he himself has a scientific approach.

Bizarrely I'm sure *The Economist* has become more sufferable with time. In 1997 they backed the Tories, and in 2001 and 2005 they maintained Blair was insufficiently right wing and cautious with adding the market to public services and cutting taxes.

Perhaps by 2050 they will become Corbynites, or perhaps they've got to moderate their own expectations and demands after seeing that Cameron, the Conservative alternative to Blair, yields not a reinvigorated Conservatism but the death of Blairism and perhaps indeed, in-extreme, the death of *liberalism* in the UK.

First Corbyn's got to get kicked by the bourg purging labour (which is inevitable seeing as they don't want to hand over power), followed by general strike, then violence if the strikes don't work, but they won't know this is the order, and that Benn was right, until it's too late.

The unions cucked out at the last conference (imagine my shock) and effected the deselections of Blairites, but I can't remember specifics so if you're interested further look it up and post it here and refresh me.

Yes, and more generally deeper-thinking than I was expecting. Less focussed on this superficial wank about muh Russia and muh xenophobia and all these other talking points that the media want us to think young people are concerned about.

i still find amusement in the way my distaste for "i feel European" people is amplified by the fact I secretly wish i was from any CANZUK country except Britain. I think it might be because I can clearly see British-Europeans and how they integrate with wider British identity, and they fall on the undesirable liberal-britain-as-a-young-country side of 'British' rather than the postwar all-in-it-together-now-let's-win-the-peace side.

it stops being funny when I remember that if things go badly 70% of these 'Europeans' would be on the plane to the ex-dominions long before they'd actually move to the EU, even if the EU offered an easier citizenship process.

I'd say the "I FEEL EUROPEAN" lot really want to be from celtic nations but aren't so attach themselves to that. I mean you never hear this shit from Scottish people because the kind of middle income white collar workers feel scottish. I mean so many of them are now applying for irish passports and "rediscovering their Irish roots".

Also tbh I bet you loads of these people would move to Europe: just specifically Ireland. Like if you are Irish, expect a load of London-Brighton-Bristol libs coming your way shortly, god save you.

Always seemed an odd one to me. I mean I really like a lot of places in Europe but it's so fucking big it's hard to really feel any form of connection to it as a whole. The smaller the thing the more easy it is to be connected. I don't give a shit about being European or British or whatever. I would say I have a fair bit of civic pride though.

Eh, there's a kind of bullshitty integration of Scottish nationalism with pro-European (Union) ism that i think is more rooted in SNP policy than anything else. Though weirdly I think "I feel European" is probably more the kind of thing the trendy-Yes-left (Green/RISE/SSP) would say rather than the average SNP voter.

Like there are a lot of cliches about how Scotland has always looked to Europe, been closer to Europe, etc, and I'd even say that it was true for obvious strategic reasons but it's not really relevant to the modern European Union. I dunno, I just don't really take it seriously. I guess I'm not a fan of the Liberal-Nationalist axis because I was always sympathetic to the SocDem-Nationalist look they adopted until 2015.

Maybe it's just a reflexive distaste for political cliche from all sides. My eye twitches every time someone says "the people of Scotland." even if I agree with the point they're making. Or maybe it's because - as some may remember from 2017's election night - my Scottish-Nationalist sentiments were shattered by the return of 13 Scottish Conservative MPs since it serves as an uncomfortable reminder there are plenty of terrible people in Scotland, and if you take away the nationalist/pro-Independence fervour you realise just how boring, barren and pointless Scottish public life and politics are. It's not even that I've developed unionist sentiment, I just don't care anymore.

Spooked as it sounds and is, I've always carried an undercurrent of feeling that Scotland deserves better than the Scots.

We need to reclaim this distincltly British boozed up form of socialism.

The "oh Jeremy Corbyn" chants where a good start with their connection to football sing songs. Although I feel it's effect is dampened when it's nothing but middle class Bristol uni students singing it.

100% agree: I mean my Labour Branch all go to the pub after a meeting anyways, but we need more "seshialism". Tbh combine it with Greggs nationalisation, and we have a basis for a "second state" akin to the PCI.

Not much you can do when you've got hundreds of thousands of card carrying liberal autists in Labour demanding so. Hopefully the Tories continue to be so incompetent that they allow the deadline to overrun.

Corbyn did say at one point he wouldn't put remain on the second referendum which created an entertaining amount of salt.

>Corbyn did say at one point he wouldn't put remain on the second referendum

Corbyn has always bee a two-faced snake. He says one thing but does the complete opposite. He makes many promises while at the same time tries to satisfy the needs of the most revolting kind of people. I'm still surprised how the Labor can't manage to remove him. He ruins the party.

I cant think of any time he has done this. Also all he said yesterday was what was voted on in conference months ago. It still doesn't seem like Labour has changed its plan from "just let the Torys fuck it and call an election at peak fucked"

So a load of tory backbenchers are planning to end executive control over agenda-setting and effectively end the ability of the government to decide the business of the House. In Latin America they'd call this a legislative coup. We are end-game now comrades…

Tory backbenchers are planning with Bercow to end the government's ability to set the agenda for the Commons: effectively ending the ability of the government to do anything and giving backbenchers free reign. It is difficult to state how fucking immense this is.

Why hasn't anyone shamed the BBC and all the other deception-by-omission propaganda outlets to stop giving their secret bezzie m8 Tommy Robinson a platform? Next time some norf fc plonker rams some pakis we need to mass-complain to OfCom and BBC Newswatch with some indignant spiel about how "The BBC is responsible for Islamophobic attacks by giving unceasing coverage to Tommy Robinson and legitimizing his demonization of an entire religion blah blah blah"

This cunt never talks about the wars that caused the immigration. Never talks about MI5 because they're his bosses. Gets arbitrary visits from police so he can film it and say "Oi oi oi in front of mah kids! Get out mah fackin house!" and gets a short jail sentence every time he starts to become irrelevant (*actually a stay at a 5-star underground JTRIG suite) and he doesn't even use his real name - probably his accent too the fucking octuple-barreled name spook cunt).

We used to have mods who tolerated different points of view, and now we don't. That's why board quality has declined. We can have high quality and also win over obnoxious /pol/acks to socialism, which has always been /leftypol/'s main impact on 'real life'.

>We used to have mods who tolerated different points of view, and now we don't

As >>2785943 says this narrative is completely false. We used to have /pol/acks running rampant while anyone who so much as said "Rojava" got banhammered. Ultimately, most of the /pol/acks coming here aren't worth arguing with, and there's no reason why we should tolerate their antics just so someone can debunk them for the 876th time. I for one don't have any more patience for them, but if you want to waste your time "converting" some /pol/yps you are free to make a thread.

tbh - and it probably still won't make me popular for saying it - the shift away from approving of /pol/ stances on social issues is a good thing.

"Being obsessed with possible racial differences in Autism Level is perfectly normal and acceptable so long as you make token statements about giving the workers control of the means of production" was always terrible and stupid. Whether by mod action or other coincidence, it's one of the few things on /leftypol/ that have improved over time.

I'm kind of confused on how to gain and wield political power without being an MP. Like, do I just join labour and help them out with whatever they do in the local area? If you've done it, do you think you make measurable impacts on your area?

Pls no bully btw, I just want to do something beyond theory, but I also don't want to waste my time.

Yes, I remember. I have also gotten banned several times because of those threads. That doesn't mean I think /pol/acks should be allowed to shit all over every thread. Stop being a condescending asshole just because someone disagrees with you.

Getting onto committee positions within the local party means more likely for left wing candidates for councillors and MPs. Where I live the local Labour party was shit and the council was shit as well, run by Blairites who support burning homeless people's stuff ect. But now mainly via momentum its about 50/50 left vs right within all areas of the local party (councillors and committees) and now there is a good chance of forcing the Blairite MP into early retirement. There is still a big differences between each CLP in terms of how left wing/how active they are. In terms of getting influence on policy decisions that is normal done by either

1)working for a left wing think tank

2)working you way up the labour party internally

3)working your way up unions (as>>2786008 said dont do this its kind of the issue with unions right now)

I would suggest starting with momentum as their meetings are way more relaxed then normal party meetings and the people are better

they seem totally rudderless. like, completely without a plan, just sitting at sea being buffeted about. i mean sure you've got a notionally corbynite leader, but i get absolutely no impression that there's a plan whatsoever. i mean i'm just an arrogant weirdo, but it would seem to me there are 3 basic things Scottish Labour could do.

1. Seriously plan to take many more seats and become the next Scottish government

2. Seriously plan to retake second place and become the next official opposition

3. Seriously plan to remain where they are and position themselves either as an attractive coalition partner, or bloc of votes, orienting them towards getting specific important policies passed at budgets.

Blairite, Corbynite, secret nationalist, it doesn't matter - you've surely got to have a plan that shares some of those fundamentals. But there doesn't seem to be any serious planning at all. Just ad-hoc attempts to respond to situations as they develop without any internal coherence. I'd cynically surmise it as "trying to keep their seats", but even that sort of very minimalistic strategy doesn't seem to be working. It would almost be impressive if I didn't have a sort of internal screaming feeling every time I think about it - if I can see it, why can't they? Why is nobody even trying to provide direction? Aren't they supposed to be the people in the know and me the arrogant guesser?

Maybe I'm just overlooking some secretly really heated factional battles that explain the paralysis of the party, but it doesn't seem like it. Even those tend to reveal themselves as being a conflict between plans.

I think the issue is that nobody knows what the fuck is going on in Scottish politics right now, the Nats can just rest on their laurels as-long-as the indy community thinks they are one push away (when they realise they aren't, they'll start splitting or joining ideological parties like the SSP, Greens, and the eventual right-wing ScotsNat party that will come sooner or later), the tories are riding high on the return of unionist and ruralist votes to their cause, while Labour is just sitting there thinking "Well the fuck we do now?". I mean Glasgow is the best example: Labour won half the seats and requires 2k> votes to get the other half: there is a very real chance that at the next election all of Glasgow elects a Labour MP. How would Scotlab deal with this? They'd flail around like magikarps while Southside and Paul Sweeny basically do all the work. The old thing of "SLab being a branch office" is true atm, but its not because Southside is some imperialistic force, it's because SLab can't fucking get its shit together.

How the fuck do we get the working class on our side? They vote labour but that's as far as they would ever go. You chat to them at a match and they are racist as my grandfather. Also these guys seem the most militant out of the lot.

2) you need to build organisations that enact working class power: you win the working class over by working for them. You deliver them positive results, and they will stand with you.Quite a few ways to do this, but it depends on context: what works in a big city is very different to a small town.

deal passes/fails just, then Labour do a vote of no confidence. Which would probably past the first time but it doesn't trigger a general election unless the government has a vote of confidence within the 14 days which will probably happen. Either way the government goes from basically not able to do anything to not do anything at all. It will drag on this year and then at some point the public or MPs will just get fed up and give in to an election.

Well if the deal passes the DUP have said they'll withdraw support for the gov if the deal is passed, and I imagine a few Moggites might go full Ultra-tory too. I cannot see the government surviving if the deal gets passed. The interesting course of events is a narrow defeat: what is she tries to stay on? Like a major defeat would spell her doom but losing by like 15> is close enough. It could paralyse the entire government…

Current polling puts Labour and Torys pretty much on the same. Which in terms of seats will give both parties around 275-290 which isn't enough for a government. If this happens Labour would probably be in government for a year or so with support from SNP/greens/PC/lib-dems. However polling is kind of pointless right now because:

a)Most people don't care about politics and only tune in during a general election campaign, important to note during elections the laws on media coverage make a lot of the anti-Corbyn propaganda shit illegal

b)Labour are way better than Torys at campaigning. Not only do Labour have more active members they are also more determined and younger. May has seriously pissed off the Tory party's members (to the point where some are refusing to distribute leaflets promoting the EU deal)

c)The torys have been in power for a while now and are out of ideas

d)Its likely a proportion of the 2/3 of UKIP voters who went back to Torys in 2017 go back to UKIP depending on the outcome of the EU deal. This might make a slight difference in a few marginal seats.

I can't say I share your optimism, let's hope you are right. Also UKIP is long gone. I think people aren't too happy how Labour isn't creating an alternative option for brexit. I know a lot of Labour voters didn't vote for brexit but there's enough for a decent level of disenfranchisement of the party. We also have cunts like the never corbyn lot who look at our imperialistic past with pride. I think both parties are weak right now in the time where they both could easily be in the ascendancy. It's all mad.

Nah the technical procedure as per the FTPA is that the leader of the opposition can claim the mantle of PM but must be able to command the confidence of the House. Corbyn could do this with the sole intent of calling an election, which I imagine the rest of the house would oblige to. As such, he could be PM for a brief period of time.

What is your take on growing religions on our island, how do we incorporate them into our movement? I can't help but feel they vote for us but their loyalty is to their God (fair enough) rather than our politics which means they are tenuous allies at best.

IMO, it's not really tenuous given that it's a complete cuckold move to vote for the tories as minority. It's very obvious that they're decadent bougies with no regards for the proles, whether white or non-white.

This is just ancedotal but I'm personally an Indian Buddhist and me and my parents have literally always voted Labour in every election and supported socialist policies.

The Nassau agreement to buy Polaris know-how and Polaris missiles from the U.S.A. …will mean utter dependence on the U.S. for their supply. Nor is it true that all this costly defence expenditure will produce an "independent British deterrent". It will not be independent and it will not be British and it will not deter. Its possession will impress neither friend nor potential foe.

Labour party manifesto 1964.

[spoiler]such a shame that Britain failed to take either logical path.

Path 1: Labour cancels polaris, which means biting a the sunk-costs of the program. This ends Britain's strategic deterrent program. Britain possibly retains free-fall tactical nuclear bombs, but Labour conference fights about Trident will now not occur. After the end of the cold war the tactical bombs might go too, rendering britain non-nuclear.

Path 2: with various starting points (not doing the Nassau agreement at all, cancelling and spending loadsamoney, not buying Trident, etc.) Britain builds her own deterrent or purchases the missiles from France, then withdraws from NATO and adopts a defence policy independent of the US on the model of France. i.e. in some cold-war-goes-hot scenarios, the option of taking a "you leave us alone and we'll leave you alone" approach with the USSR is maintained while NATO and Warsaw Pact forces render one another's countries wastelands.

so instead we pay a lot of money to host what are functionally US nukes. Much is made of the fact a British submarine crew has the physical capability of firing them tomorrow, and the PM the capacity to order the firing - but very little is made of the fact if the Americans decide they don't like us, they can cut off supply and within a short period the missiles will simply rust, and that's a much more important fact. Oh, and Blairites still say we can't win on a unilateralist manifesto.[/spoiler]